Has Europe Found the Enemy?

The division between the rich and the poor becomes an abyss… Consumerism consumes all questioning…Consequently people lose their selfhood, their sense of identity, and then locate and find an enemy in order to define themselves. The enemy - whatever their ethnic or religious nomination - is always found among the poor. 

John Berger, Bento's Sketchbook

Bury me standing…

is the title of a book by Isabel Fonseca written about twenty five years ago. It describes the life of the Roma people living in many areas of Europe. It is a stark read about a stateless people who for centuries have been despised, degraded, maltreated and marginalised. About twelve million Roma live in edge cities and towns of the European Union. They have been victims of slavery, segregation, ghettoisation, forced integration and even sterilisation. During the Second World War the Nazis exterminated more than half a million in concentration camps and gas chambers. Yet, their plight has never become centre stage because it was not taken up by mainstream politics and media. They only make headlines when expelled from one or other member state of the European Union. Indeed, the reporting of recent incidents by some sections of the media would indicate little concern for past horrors committed against them and less concern for their present situation. With nobody to champion their plight they have remained invisible, like African slaves during slavery, native populations in occupied countries during colonialism, and travelling people in Ireland in the past. 

The "discovery" of a blond and blue-eyed child in a Roma community in Greece in the past week started a witch hunt that reached Ireland. Children who looked different from their parents were taken into custody by the police and health authorities on the assumption of being different-looking from their parents. While the authorities may have been following the letter of the law and childcare procedures there seemed to be a lack of native wit and understanding about the survival culture of those who are poor, look different and on the margins of society. 

What were the comments of people on seeing an Amer-African child playing in a dusty, suburban street of an Asian city in the nineteen seventies? Surely, he would be seen as "out of place". Nevertheless, if the neighbours on the street saw people apprehending him because he looked "out of place" they would have sought an explanation. Is the blond and blue-eyed child in the hills of Jamaica being cared for by her black grandmother also "out of place" if one didn’t know where her forebears came from? What evidence other than ethnic difference is needed in order to take a child from its minders? Are the foreign children adopted by Irish parents also "out of place"?

Many ethnic groups in Europe over the centuries have been, and some still are, where the Roma are today. The dominant powers created their enemies. Enemies were and still are those who are different be that of race, colour, creed, belief, culture, ethnicity or just poor and unemployed. The enemy has become a staple of European identity. The tendency is to define national identity by the dislike of others rather than what we like about ourselves. Having used such criteria the tendency then is to demonise, pushing them onto margins of invisibility while feeding the public mind-set with images of fear creating an atmosphere of xenophobia and racism.

The images spun about the Roma and poor people in general are negative similar to those used in colonial times in the suppression of native people. Sadly, Europeans have re-imported to Europe the worst characteristics that they perpetrated against natives in colonial times. The attempted extermination of the Jewish people, Roma and others is evidence of the ethnic cleansing committed abroad against native peoples from Columbus onwards. So, racist attacks and the recent incidents committed against the Roma should surprise nobody.

Marginalised people are not savages as those who were different in the past were described. These people were described as bereft of any semblance of good nature. They were described as "savages" that needed to be "civilised." A good example of this is the letter of a certain Rev. Edward Hudson to Lord Charlemont in 1798 about his plans to civilise the Irish.

Rev. Hudson wrote, "I hope to make our savages happy against their will, by establishing trade and industry among them," adding with considerable distaste, that many "traces of the savage life" could still be detected in the population…the same laziness and improvidence, the same unrelenting ferocity in their combats, the same love of intoxication, the same hereditary animosities, handed down from generation to generation." (Richard Gott, Britain's Empire)

In describing those who are different in such derogatory language one robs them of good nature, love, nurturing and enterprise. Once dehumanised it is easy to demonise them. However, oppressed people in these situations nurture dignity, grasp at hope like a weed competing with concrete, persevere without cynicism or pessimism.

They are the informal economy, in most instances living in squalor performing jobs that the luxury section of society despises. Poverty and discrimination have been implanted in their DNA. But, given all that, they have little difficulty in reaching out to others with hospitality in similar situations. They are as suspicious of bureaucracy as they are of criminal gangs that have shaken them down over centuries. So why should they approach or register in such offices that they suspect are acting against them? In their lives a tendency of silence is a protective crust. Informal relationships are common within marginalised communities. Often parents share their children with grandparents or childless family members. 

European history is pock-marked with horror as a result of the way it treated minorities and those living on the edge. Can a new Europe offer the Roma and those on the fringes equality of access to basic human protections? How can Europeans protect the strongest if they fail the weakest?

 …because I have always been on my knees. - Roma proverb

Hopes, dreams and ashes

(The following piece was written in 1993, when Bobby was living and working in London.)

News travels fast in immigrant 'ghettos'. The ghetto has its news outposts and its news carriers. The news outposts and the quality of information imparted vary - from church to pub to disco, to hairdressing salons, crèches and Sunday football gatherings. The ghetto is selective as to who are insiders and outsiders, who gets information and who is excluded. The relationship of the immigrant’s homeland to his country of residence is also a determining factor in the openness and liberty of the immigrant ghetto. The very reason for the existence of the ghetto and the tissue of suspicion that exists in such places is that crossing borders is a bit of conspiracy.

In most migrant ghettos there are twilight zones of illegality regarding identity, work, taxation and leisure. Immigrants do not usually like having their failures known, particularly at home. Neither do they like to hear the failures at home made known to them personally. They know that others in the ghetto know about them but there is an unspoken agreement of not washing each other’s linen in public. Exile is painful enough.

However, it is important to let others know certain things about yourself, maybe offering help or putting out a message of need or telling others about your whereabouts, like going 'home' for a break or going away to look for work or just to visit friends. Immigrants have needs and plans that settled people do not have to bother about. Immigrants have different agendas, networks and contacts that come into play when there is a need that must be taken care of.

      

On one trip from the UK to Ireland I went on the agenda of a few people. I let it be known that I was going for a week and would be taking my car on the ferry. The day after I made the decision to travel I had a call from a young fellow from Donegal who worked in construction. Pat had no intention of being an immigrant for life. His thinking was conditioned by generations of seasonal, cyclical family migration. His plans were to be away for the cold months of the year when there was nothing economically happening at home. When at home, Pat’s time was divided between farming, fishing and bricklaying - when such work was available. He phoned me saying he had heard that I was going to Ireland. His requested that I take an outboard motor, which he had bought at a bargain price. In asking me to take it, Pat figured that I would get an easy passage through customs. I agreed to take the outboard. He arrived at our house and I gave him my keys to place the machine in the boot of the car. He thanked me and went away.

Next call I got was from a young lady by the name of Caroline. She worked in the hotel business and was planning to get married in the summer. Her request was that she needed to get her wedding dress over in time for the wedding and my taking it for her would lighten her load. I agreed and she, like Pat, deposited the precious box in the boot of car. These things were happening days before I left so I was travelling around London for days with those items in the boot. Indeed, I had forgotten all about them.

The day before I left, Christine called me. She said that she had a special task for me the next time I was going by car to Ireland. Her local doctor, who she knew since she came to Britain, had died recently when she was away on holidays. He was Irish, and had come to London during the war years. He always had it in his head to return to Ireland, marry and settle down. But as the years passed the journey home became longer and he kept putting off getting married. So he settled in London and carried on his medical practice. In the intervening years he visited Ireland regularly, keeping an immigrant’s interest in home.

Many Irish immigrants worked in England but mentally and emotionally lived in Ireland. As a result, like the doctor, they ended up in nowhere zones. Dr. Tim, realizing that he was in such a zone, made a will a few years before his death. On Christine’s return from holidays she received a letter from Dr. Tim’s solicitor, requesting an appointment in regard to a special request he made in his will. She met the solicitor and he read her Dr. Tim’s will in which he requested for her to dispose of his ashes in the Irish sea. This was Christine’s special request of me - would I scatter Dr. Tim’s ashes in the sea about an hour and a half after leaving Holyhead? I called around to her house and while I had a cup of coffee she took my car keys and placed the ashes in the car boot.

The next evening I left London at about 8 pm to catch the 2.15 am ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. At this stage I had totally forgotten about the ‘cargo’ in the boot of my car. As I drove up the motorway I thought my car was not going as smoothly as usual. I pulled over and had a look at my wheels. All seemed well, and then it registered that I had ‘cargo’ in the boot. Of course the ashes and wedding dress were light but the outboard motor was heavy. Getting back into the car the gremlins got at me. What was I going to say to the police in Holyhead when they requested, as they usually did, to open the boot? Also, what was I going to say to the customs official in Dublin when I would be asked to declare my goods and chattel?

After juggling these questions about I decided to let it be until I reached the first hurdle at the security check in Holyhead. There was nothing I could say other than describe what was in the boot and let the police take whatever action they felt they had to take.

On reaching the ferry terminal at Holyhead I drove in to the line of cars and waited. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes before we were to drive on board the police arrived. They went from car to car opening boots and asking the usual questions about where you came from and the purpose of your visit as well as requesting some type of identification.

I opened my boot as requested and explained that I had a wedding gown, an outboard motor and the ashes of Dr. Tim. The policeman stood back, looked at me, and exclaimed in wonderment, "Extraordinary! Have a good trip." He was so totally mesmerized that he didn't even ask for a death certificate or anything associated with the ashes of Dr. Tim.

I drove aboard and parked the car. Taking my shoulder bag I dropped the jar of ashes into it, hung it on my shoulder and proceeded to the passenger area. Sitting down in the bar with Dr. Tim beside me, I began to feel a draining away of confidence. To stop the leakage I called for a drink. Settling down I began to plot the next stage of the journey: letting Dr. Tim go to his resting-place in the Irish Sea. The revving of the ferry engine focused my thoughts all the more. I calculated on a three-hour journey to Dublin and decided that after ninety minutes out from Holyhead I would deposit Dr. Tim’s remains.

This was not as easy a task as I had thought. First I decided to do a test run. So, I set off with bag on shoulder towards the rear of the ferry. It was a wild and windy night; thankfully, there was nobody sitting outside. Somehow, I felt a bit suspicious as I moved slowly along the rail of the passenger deck. Reaching the end of the ferry, I again looked around to make sure that I was alone. As for as I could ascertain there was no watch on duty and no passenger eager to take the sea air. So far so good.

Returning to my seat with my bulging shoulder bag I felt I was being stared at. Of course I wasn't. Sitting down I began to wonder what if a member of the crew saw me performing a funeral service? Would he think I was depositing drugs?

As I waited I began to reflect on the ashes, the wedding dress and the motor, their owners and the Irish immigrant community. The cargo in the boot of my car were the objects of people’s plans, some yet unfulfilled. These represented people’s lives, work, planning, symbols of hope with a desire to be at home sometime, somewhere. These things represented the nature of the Irish community in Britain, the female, the male, the old, the young, the past, the present and the future.

It was time to fulfil Dr. Tim’s desire. I set off again for the rear of the ferry. With my back to the west wind I opened the urn of ashes. Saying the Lord’s Prayer I let Dr. Tim’s remains float into the wind and the Irish Sea. Standing there for a while I thought about the many Irish abroad whose desire of return migration would never be fulfilled. Like immigrants in Ireland today, home for many would always be elsewhere. Dr. Tim had a heart divided between the home he left as a young man, and the home he adopted in England as the years passed. I wondered was he at home in either place? He lived and died alone, suspended between home and away.

As dawn began to creep up behind me I turned my attention to the next hurdle, the customs on arriving at the North Wall.

The ferry docked and we were ordered to go to our vehicles. Crossing borders is usually an anxious time even when one has nothing to declare except one’s identity and has the documents to do so. As we crept towards the customs shed and waited either to be called through or stopped, I hoped that my car would not be in the custom’s lottery number this morning. It wasn't. I was waved through and felt a great sense of freedom as I drove away into Dublin. During the week I dropped off the wedding dress and the outboard motor at designated addresses.

The networks of life are not confined by human limitations.

JBFAs, WWWs and BBs: returning after emigration

I left home young and not till old do I come back,

My accent is unchanged, my hair no longer black.

The children don’t know me, whom I meet on the way,

“Where do you come, sir?” they smile and say. 

- He Zhizhang, Chinese poet

Emigrants - involuntary, economic migrants - leave home to find a better life, a life their own countries are unable to offer; they see little future at home. This is the situation in most newly-independent states. For example, Ireland on average has annually shed half of those coming into its labour market since the foundation of the state. Young, energetic, idealistic people do not want to be members of a dole line, so they seek a better life elsewhere.

Leaving home was and still is not an easy task. However, having decided they feel they have to go after informing their near and dear. In this way they leave by the "front door" rather than steal away by the “back door.” On leaving, looking back over their shoulders, a desire to return wells up in their hearts and minds. Their relatives, friends and neighbours try to lighten the departure by saying, "Well, you’ll be back when things get better"; but they know from past experience that the vast majority will return only on holidays. The older generation are aware of the emigrant music from the past that says, "When there are better days in Ireland, I’ll come home and marry you."

With modern communication, today's emigrants can assume that return is easy. That assumption may persist for a time after departure but sooner or later emigrants realise that return may not be possible and, even if possible, is not that easy to accomplish. The development of branch, small-populated island economies like Ireland depends on investment from the trunk economies. If that happens, as it does now and then - as in Celtic Tiger Ireland - limited opportunities of return are possible.

But like emigration itself, return migration is a risky business. Frequently, emigrants return without adequate information. Returning on holidays, generally in summer time, gives emigrants a false economic mirage of home and the possibility of return. There is usually a great welcome for those returning on holidays. Returning on holidays one is asked, "Where are you now, when are you going back?" Mentally, for people at home an emigrant has become an outsider, "away somewhere". They have a tourist-brochure memory of where the emigrant lives now; the emigrant has a tourist-brochure memory of where they have come from and wish to return to. Indeed, an emigrant may still, even after many years, assume home is still where they left. Many work elsewhere but are emotionally "at home" in the country they emigrated from.

So, the experience of return may not be as smooth as one assumed. Returning emigrants will have to describe themselves, just as they had to in the countries they lived in. Emigration challenges one to define oneself, and so too does return migration. In most instances return will be from a developed, trunk economy to a less-developed one. Returning emigrants will define themselves in their conversations as a "Just back from abroad" (JBFA) or a "When we were" (WWW). The locals may describe the returnees as "Blow backs" (BBs) arriving to take advantage of the progress that happened while they were away.

One of the most important aspects of return is the opportunity for returnees to tell their stories of abroad to those who did not emigrate and for the latter to share those stories of what happened at home in the interim. However, returning from abroad brings with it the challenge of re-integration. The country one left - even if only for a couple of years - has not stood still. It may have progressed, or its economy may have regressed as in Ireland’s case. During the settling-in process comparisons are made, irritation is expressed and discomfort with what one thought was familiar surfaces. Usually, differences are seen as irritant inefficiencies. Cultural differences in the networks of life and in getting things done are described in a negative way. Those who have remained at home become irritated by such criticism and may describe such behaviour as arrogant, overbearing and insulting from an "outsider." We returnees should listen to the advice of Chibundu Onuzo, "We are arriving as partners, not lords and masters. So let tread softly and tread humbly."

So, for happy landings:

• Availability of objective information about emigration and return migration
• A general awareness of migration by both returnee and resident
• Initiate a forum of welcome in which a dialogue can happen between locals and returnees
• Local agencies monitor and reach out to returnees
• Governments need to realise that emigration and return are not quirks of human fecklessness.
• As emigrants bring gifts to new economies, returnees bring gifts too.
• Respect, tolerance and humility on all sides helps.

The boy came home from a foreign land,
Weary and wan with his staff in hand;
Five years’ absence left their trace
On golden hair, and on sunny face…
He entered his home with footsteps slow-
His friends forgot him, would his parents know? 

- 'The Return,' Patrick MacGill

Immigration Obsession: why scapegoat the most vulnerable to protect the most powerful?

"My government will bring forward a bill that further reforms Britain’s immigration system. The bill will ensure that this country attracts people who will contribute and deters those who will not." (Queen’s Speech, 07/05/13) 

The decline of the Conservative Party in the recent local elections in Britain reflects the general decline in support for traditional moderate governments throughout Europe. New parties have emerged, usually more conservative than the traditional parties. They are attracting large swaths of the electorate in their desire to capture an imagined idyllic past – through which they are defining themselves usually by their dislike of others, rather than by what they like about themselves. The rise of these new political parties and their attraction arises from the powerlessness many people are experiencing due to the failure of the economy experienced by them in bleak high streets and  neighbourhoods bereft of hope. The centralisation of power has made local government administration impotent. 

Also, since the inauguration of the European Union people feel further distant from the centres of power. The architects of the European Union had a greater sense of participation in mind for the people of Europe. However, individual member governments, European institutions and those appointed to manage the European project have failed to connect with the citizens of Europe. Over the years political leaders have consistently assured the public that they wish to be at the heart of Europe. However, when failure looms on the horizon of individual states, national politicians use the European Union as a whipping boy for these failures. As a result, there are huge vacuums in people’s lives in that they find it hard to identify with any meaningful signs and symbols that are assuring and comforting. Actually, people don’t know who to believe anymore and in that situation look for scapegoats to vent their frustrations on. 

Emerging political parties fill these vacuums of fear and hope by pointing the finger of blame at the weaker and vulnerable sections of societies that usually do not have a voice. Worse still, the mainstream political parties compete for popularity not by offering alternate policies but by depicting themselves as equally extreme as their opponents. In post-election government formation, mainstream parties are forming coalitions with extreme parties. In doing so the mainstream party has to compromise many of its principles of toleration, respect for diversity and protection of the weak.

Immigrants are the new weak, the new enemy. One economic publication in the recent past went so far as to blame immigrants for the banking crisis. One of the basic tenets of the European Union guarantees the free movement of people. Yet, so many citizens are ignorant of that fact. They resent the presence of other nationals working in their neighbourhoods yet see no contradiction in their own sons and daughters emigrating to seek work abroad. Their political leaders are slow in correcting misinformation among their constituents regarding the presence of immigrants and the contribution they make in local economies and their economies at home. Aspirants in emerging political parties latch onto perceived grievances among the population and exploit them for their own advancement. Extreme structural solutions are offered to deter immigrants such as withdrawal from the European Union and other international agreements.

Respecting the equality of difference

 

These attitudes by political leaders feed into racism that is so rampant throughout Europe. When anti-immigrant atrocities are committed blame is put on the perpetrators and rightly so. But the perpetrators of such atrocities have been listening to and are affirmed in their extremism by the comments of politicians and policies of their governments. Equally, it is evident in some situations of anti-immigrant violence that law and order institutions are slow to bring charges and convict such people. There are instances of such procrastination throughout Europe in the recent past – and presently in Germany – to bring people who have committed crimes against immigrants to justice. The remnants of ethnic inequality are deep-seated in European colonial culture. Justice for indigenous populations was not central in European imperial rule. It takes a determined effort for Europeans to respect the equality of difference and treat it accordingly. 

Many European governments are gestating new immigration legislation in the face of the disastrous effects of their economic policies. Again, highlighting the need to reform immigration policy is a diversion from real issues of unemployment, housing shortage and health services. It serves a purpose in that it feeds populist neo-fascism, creating an atmosphere of fear in immigrant communities and slowing the process of integration. Young immigrants who feel excluded from the mainstream tend to identify with global extremist movements that compete with neo-fascism.

The Queen’s Speech at the opening of the British parliament last week mentioned “a fair society that rewards people who work hard…a society where people are properly rewarded…reforming the benefits system…a fairer society where aspiration and responsibility are rewarded…a bill that further reforms immigration…will ensure that this country attracts people who will contribute and deter those who will not.” Has nobody woken up to the fact that immigrants globally remitted $500 billion last year to their home nations? That kind of money was not generated by people who want to be on the dole or unemployed. Even Britain was a net winner in the remittance merry-go-round, having received $8 billion. 

Why scapegoat the most vulnerable to protect the most powerful?

 

On reading the Queen’s speech one could be led to think that immigrants, the unemployed and those on benefits were the ones who brought about the present economic crisis that has devastated the lives of so many. There is no mention of the mandarins whose policies and practices in the banking system, the market and the media are shameful. They are not being asked to act responsibly. Nor are they sanctioned or regulated as to the way they disproportionately reward themselves and avoid taxes. Is it right to make a few hundred people redundant in order to increase and maintain executive salaries and bonuses? Is it just and ethical to recognise and condone havens that enable tax avoidance on profits made on British, European and American high streets? Are those who are annually paid millions because they’re “worth it” more deserving than those who struggle on low wages because they are immigrants, not good enough or not working hard enough? Why scapegoat the most vulnerable to protect the most powerful?

But it is a trend at present to cast protest groups that are highlighting inequality as irrational. These groups are pointing the finger at feral elites who have taken control of the corridors of power and who, by effective lobbying, tilt economic policies to protect their interests. This is borne out by many commentators such as Ha-Joon Chang who wrote recently:

"In Britain the coalition government constantly slags off those welfare slobs in the working class suburbs, sleeping off their hard night’s slog with Sky Sports and online casinos…In the Eurozone, many believe that its fiscal crisis can be ultimately traced back to those lazy Mediterraneans in Greece and Spain, who had lived off hard-working Germans and Dutch, spending their time sipping espresso and card games. Unless those people start working hard, it is said, the Eurozone problems cannot be fixed." (The Guardian, 29/1/13)

Others are making similar remarks. George Monbiot writes,  

"Many of those who rule us do not in their hearts belong here. They belong to a different culture, a different world, which knows as little of its own acts as it knows of those who suffer them." (The Guardian, 28/01/13)

Slavoj Zizek notes that those who formulate the present economic policies brand all protesters as irrational: 

"...the protesters know very well what they don't know; they don't pretend to have fast and easy answers; but what their instinct is telling them is nonetheless true – that those in power also don't know it. In Europe today, the blind are leading the blind." (The Guardian, 16/01/13)

Vanessa Baird refreshes our memories when she writes:  

"The political response to the 2008 financial crisis-first to bail out the banks, then to cut public spending-has produced the crowning irony of our times: those who made the mess have come out virtually unscathed while the rest of us are being punished…The corporate rich, especially those linked to finance, have governments in their pockets." (New Internationalist, January 2013)

Pope Francis too has commented on the economic crisis; 

"The financial crisis that we are experiencing makes us forget that its ultimate origin is to be found in a profound human crisis…We have created new idols. The worship of the Golden Calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacks any human goal…This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute of markets and financial speculation and thus deny the right of control to states, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good…in which human beings are now considered consumer goods…Money has to serve, not rule." (16/05/13)

An offshore reality isolated from regulation and the common good

So, the challenge that confronts the leaders of modernity is to imagine a different future of peace, justice and prosperity. Otherwise, ghosts of a European past in the form of protectionism, extreme nationalism, racism, ethno-centrism and exclusion will haunt the mean culturally-bleached, abandoned European high streets. But, the paradigm and the construct of colonisation as described by Albert Memmi is being recycled to justify a new era of global inequality dominated by a few who put themselves in an offshore reality isolated from regulation and the common good.            

"The mythical portrait of the colonised therefore includes an unbelievable laziness, and that of the coloniser, a virtuous taste for action. At the same time the coloniser suggests that employing the colonised is not very profitable, thereby authorising his unreasonable wages." (Albert Memmi, The Coloniser and the Colonised)

"Mankind’s responsibility cannot be left to some outside power or to a god. On the contrary, people must commit themselves in terms of their personal, individual human responsibility." (Stephane Hessel, Time for Outrage)

Who Dressed You?

"Ma, I’m on the third floor. Help me." Then the voice went dead. 
- A girl calling her mother after the clothing factory building collapsed in Dhaka.

The fashion parade at the Punchestown races this week and the latest horrific deaths of hundreds of men and women in a clothes factory in Bangladesh exhibited two aspects of the clothing industry that are seldom connected. The interviewer at the races feeds the curiosity of the viewing public by asking where the interviewee got his or her outfit. The interviewee’s answer goes no further than a local boutique or a clothing chain. They seldom make the connection between the outlet where they purchased the item and those whose hard labour in sweat-shop conditions manufactured it. The probability is that the outfit will be worn just for that day and then disposed of to a clothing bank.

In a bubblegum culture not only is the item of clothing disposable but the person that fashioned it is too. This is obvious from the conditions they slave in and the accidents that occur either in fires or in the collapse of buildings similar to the one in Dhaka this week.

The clothing business has over time migrated to the cheapest manufacturing destination to feed the western market system with cheap garments. Of course this practice is not new. The African Slave Trade perpetrated by European powers put in place a mercantile exploitative paradigm that has been copied right up to the present. The African Slave Trade supplied the European consumer market with cheap goods and essentially financed the industrial revolution. It was terminated after more than a century of campaigning that took on and exposed the slave system of plantation owners and their protectors in European governments. It is well to remember that at the abolition of slavery European governments indemnified the slave owners. The slaves, wealth creators, were turned out on the road and left to fend for themselves. 

After the Second World War European governments at the request of business imported workers from their former colonies again as cheap labour to fill the demographic deficit in European populations as a result of war. As in slave times, European governments and manufacturing companies in a mercantile mind-set forgot that workers were people, human beings like themselves with similar aspirations. These workers, immigrants, people, organised themselves and as in the past had to struggle for their rights and dignity.

However, as they demanded and eventually got parity of wages and rights with the indigenous population, manufacturing companies began to look elsewhere for cheaper labour. Simultaneously, indigenous European populations became anti-immigrant. Listening to political voices at general and local elections that used immigrants as scapegoats, new immigration legislation rendered the importation of cheap labour prohibitive. But, manufacturing companies with their newly acquired lobbying outreach in centres of power around the world persuaded governments and international agencies to facilitate their interests in the form of free trade agreements and the easy movement of capital in a system of modern globalisation. Its architects in their race for riches created their own reality, a reality that excluded people. After centuries of struggle, people, human beings, wealth creators became slaves again.

In that light manufacturing chased cheap, unprotected labour. Government departments in developing nations like Bangladesh sought out manufacturing companies offering all kinds of sweetheart deals that would give employment; in doing so, these governments sold their people short. Transnational companies, as in colonial times, became the extension of western governments – most of whom turned a blind eye as long as cheap commodities kept flowing in, some profits were repatriated and market share maintained.

Over time, however, consumers throughout the world have become disgusted on hearing about the treatment of those who make the clothes they wear. This disgust is heightened on seeing the horrific pictures of poor women, girls and men being pulled out of collapsing buildings in which their clothes are sewed. They are equally horrified by news and pictures of industrial accidents that leave people dead and their environment poisoned like what happened in Dhaka this week.

So, what do you do? Check the brands you have on your back and in your clothes closet. Are they brands from those stores whose clothes are manufactured in these sweatshops? If they are, do you feel any connection with the woman trapped in that clothing factory calling for her mother to come and release her?

We are indignant about the women who were exploited in this country in Magdalene laundries. Should we not be equally angry about the way women are treated in Bangladesh that sew our clothes?

What should we do?

• Check the brands we wear.
• Where are they manufactured?
• Are there outlets for these brands in Ireland?
• What stores near you sell these brands?
• Network with others who are campaigning for change.
• Check out the Clean Clothes Campaign Ireland.
• Lobby your elected officials and European Members of Parliament. 

We didn’t want to go in but the supervisors threatened to dock pay if we didn’t return to work. 

– The words of a worker who was ordered to leave the factory building the day before because of cracks on walls.

Irrational Rants Feed Empty Souls

“It is necessary to destroy all churches of the region.” 

- Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, 12/3/2013

The bombing at the Boston marathon has shocked people to the core of their civility. Those maimed are left with reminders for life. Those who narrowly escaped being there at the finish when the bombs went off are left struggling to put their escape in context. They, as private citizens, and many others in the media are asking why? Similar questions are put after each horror. How could two young people carry out such an irrational act, to kill and maim innocent people like themselves and their kith and kin out enjoying an international occasion? What feeds the irrationality, the emotional aridity of two young people to make bombs that kill people like themselves? However, those two young people do not have a monopoly on irrationality.

Recently, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia called for the destruction of all Christian churches in the Arabian Gulf. There was little uproar from the leaders of Christian churches or governments either in the west or in Arabian Peninsula. Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, Pope Francis, other church leaders, governments and Saudi rulers have remained silent. If her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, declared that the central London mosque in Regents Park should be closed would there be uproar about her intolerance and insensibility? If Pope Francis declared a fatwa against mosques in Europe would the media remain silent? Certainly not, both Christian leaders, Queen Elizabeth and Pope Francis would be pilloried, attacked and written off bird-brained irrationals.

Yet, there is surprise when two young people act irrationally and maim people that they obviously judge are children of a lesser God, not their God. What role do Saudi religious leaders, such as the Grand Mufti, have in feeding that irrationality, intolerance and hatred of others that western and Islamic leaders remain silent about?

Equally, what is lacking in the signs and symbols of so-called western democracy that these young people reject and feel alienated from? And what is a world movement, like Islamic extremism, offering as an identity to those who act with the depravity of the Boston Marathon bombers? What part does the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, drones in Pakistan, the Palestinian situation, Abu Ghraib, support of corrupt Islamic despots and the negative depiction of Islam in the west have to do with the development of Islamic extremists? Are these the ingredients that nurture the kind of Islamic extremism that propels the depravity of two brothers to maim innocent bystanders in Boston?

How has the natural goodness in young people been so eroded that they see no difficulty in bombing or shooting innocent bystanders in schools, shopping centres, cinemas, all their neighbours? It would seem that in such circumstances identity with a global movement is so self-consuming that it robs people of natural feelings for what is decent, local and home-defining. They have no home for normal human feelings such as empathy, sympathy, concern and care for others near and dear. The heart has lost its nature. There appears to be no concern for the effects of their actions on their family, friends and wider community. Such emotional aridity denotes poverty of spirit. 

For an ideal to be healthy, it needs to be pitted against objective fact, networked with others who can be objectively critical, emotionally tempered and be in solidarity with balanced objectives within lawful constraints. Ideals lacking the aforementioned constraints easily become tyrannical demons. History is pockmarked with such tyrannies.

In the case of much religious and nationalist extremism, it would seem that many adherents come from immigrant backgrounds, particularly second generation-born. Their immigrant parents relate the kind of treatment they experienced in their adopted countries. If their experiences in the new country are negative in the form of racism and discrimination these will be shared with the children. The children’s experiences at school and socially, if negative, will be reinforced by the parent’s stories. 

A factor that causes confusion for the younger generation is the parents' definition of home which will be the country they came from. The young generation’s experience of home is locally on the street, at school with their friends, at the local mosque and at other social activities. If the parents have idealised where they have come from, as many immigrants do, if they have unresolved grief about home, the young generation are caught between their real home and the idealised home of their parents. Home for the parents is their story. For the children, many don’t know the old country and do not fit into the new country. 

Another factor that causes confusion is that immigrant parents expect their children to be like their cousins back home. The mosque, the temple or church should be a bridge between home and away, an agent of integration into the new society. If the imam, priest or pastor is an immigrant from the country of the parents a danger is that he will model his ministry on where he came from and expect his adherents to measure up to that paradigm which is generally idealised. Essentially, in that scenario the minister is keeping his adherents prisoners of his and their parent’s nostalgia. All are robbed of understanding secular urban society, relating and interacting with it, contributing to it and benefitting from it. Many eastern thinkers over the century have tried to understand the clash between the spirit of the orient and the science of the west. Sayyid Qutb highlighted that dichotomy in his writings having lived in the United States in the middle of the last century.

Here young immigrants have to cope with signs and symbols of a nation that may or may not be soul-warming depending on the quality of the social, political and cultural diet they consume and experience at home and on the street. If they feel rejected, alienated or discriminated against because of race, religion or ethnicity the chances are they will recoil to the rumour mill of the ghetto and link into worldwide movements offering participation, self-esteem and identity. That identity will be defined by what they dislike about others rather than what they like about themselves. This is the first step towards emotional bleaching that gives way to literal dogmatism in the name of a greater cause. Emotional aridity leaves ideals feral and unregulated.

Extremism of the kind expressed by the Grand Mufti and his adherents particularly in the Arabian Gulf will meet the desires of youth whose idealism needs an experiential challenge expressed against a perceived enemy. For Muslims extremists that enemy is the apostate west.

The tragedy is that western leaders, particularly in the political arena, remain silent and seem unlikely to disturb the sources of the kind of fundamentalism the breeds the Boston Marathon bombers and others, local or foreign, that cause so much havoc to innocent bystanders.

Governments need to monitor their diasporas with a message of inclusivity, particularly those in whose homelands conflicts smoulder. Over the past half century most of the cross-border and internal conflicts have been and still are financed by immigrant diasporas annually topped up by involuntary economic migrants, emigrants. These are people who had to leave home to get a better way of life. They carry unresolved grief and anger that can easily be channelled into avenues of grievance against their home governments. It is necessary to keep in mind that most if not all liberation movements of the past century germinated in diasporas.                        

In the modern era we’ve allowed our children’s souls to grow emptier, our schools have become a disgrace, and our communities have become shattered. Fathers cannot get jobs, mothers are overworked and underpaid, and everyone is looking for real intimacy. And our young people are left dangling. It just gets worse and worse, generation after generation. Then sooner or later, someone says, “We’re in a state of emergency!” No, you’ve been in it for a long time. You just refused to acknowledge it. 

 – Cornel West, 'Hope On A Tightrope'

Is the only certainty we learn from history that we don’t learn anything from history?

Leaving home and coming home

Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and left that night for Egypt. (Mt.2-14)

For many emigrants the heaviest burden is isolation, the loss of family and friend networks, of community, an alienation that is felt particularly in times of crisis. (Irish Times,1/11/12)

Over the past several years many new people have arrived in Ireland from countries throughout the world in search of a better life like the Irish who emigrated in the past. Now, young Irish people are leaving, like their forebears, to seek a better life elsewhere. Economic failures throw people out of their usual habitats in search of an opportunity to be creative and be contributors to their own well-being. For both those coming and going, particularly in modern times, there is a strong hope that the outward journey, filled with hope, will eventually lead to a return journey home.

The situation of these people and their children who have to leave home find themselves betwixt and between. They are border people, looking back over their shoulders. They have left comfortable lifestyles, jobs they thought were secure, mortgages on family homes, children’s schools, social familiarity, faith communities and the comfort of the familiar. Now, they have to cope with new skylines, strange signs and symbols, in a new learning curve trying to make the unfamiliar comfortable to themselves and family members. Like many emigrants with young families, initially they assume that their children will be like their counterparts back where they left. Liminality, being neither here nor there, has become for many temporary normality.

However, for those who are allowed entry into another state because of the skills and talent they bring, life is bearable in that they are viewed in their new surroundings as being there legally. But many emigrants in modern times are fleeing with the few bits and pieces that they can fit in a plastic bag or a back pack. The borders they reach are not welcoming. They are looked on as suspect, a risk, after risking life and limb to reach that point. Along the way they are exploited by traffickers and in many instances left to die. On arrival at borders they are arrested, detained and kept in detention centres. All these are people who do not want to leave what we all desire, home. Yet, they are treated as disposable.

Has anything changed in two thousand years for the vulnerable, the poor and marginal? One is left to assume that Jesus, his mother and father in their flight were not that much different from those fleeing for whatever reason in modern times. Yet, there are those who claim that modern migration is different. Sure it is. The external journey has changed for many from a donkey to a jumbo jet, a rickety fishing craft in the Mediterranean or a dhow on the Horn of Africa. But the internal journey has not changed. There is the loss and change  in the internal journey of the human heart. The loss of an extended family the search for a new community takes time.

Then there is the hope of return. In modern times return seems easily accessible. There is the idealisation that the streets of the destination are paved with gold. But return for many, other than on holidays, remains a dream in a world of biblical-like inequality for the masses. The income for 1% of the population, the global elite, grew by 11% while the income for the 99% grew only by 0.2%. Anecdotal comments by politicians, the media and economists indicating that the present economic downturn is short-lived and return is just around the corner is creating false hope for many.    

  

As Christmas and other major religious festivals approach emigrants hanker and long to visit home and relatives. And they do return to visit at great inconvenience and expense to themselves. While it is an occasion to connect with extended family and friends there is also the need for emigrants to send out a message that their emigration is a success. Failure is not a word in the migration dictionary. But it is important that family, community and the nation value emigrants. They generate economies abroad by their energy and ingenuity and at home by their remittances. It is important that they get a message that they are valued and appreciated wherever they are and at Christmas are remembered.

Hopefully, if they decide to return or visit they will be assured a welcome. And that is what we all need, particularly at Christmas.

“Where migrants and refugees are concerned, the Church and her various agencies ought to avoid offering charitable services alone; they are also called to promote real integration in a society where all are active members and responsible for one others welfare generously offering a creative contribution and rightfully sharing in the same rights and duties.” (Pope Benedict XV, 12/10/12)

So Joseph got up, took the child and his mother and returned to the land of Israel. There he settled in a town called Nazareth. (Mt. 2-25)

HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

BG